The Story of StoreDot: Building the Future of Ultra-Fast EV Charging
A viral video can change everything. In 2012, StoreDot founder Doron Myersdorf posted a simple demonstration of 30-second phone charging, expecting maybe 50 views. Instead, as he shared in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, “It was like three and a half million in 24 hours. And this was at the time that not everybody were on YouTube.”
That unexpected viral moment would reshape the company’s entire trajectory, but the story begins earlier, with a scientific paper that caught Doron’s attention while working at SanDisk.
From Flash Memory to Fast Charging
“I was actually sitting at SanDisk and looking for new materials that can actually improve the flesh memory when we looked at some research that was done at Tel Aviv University about new peptides,” Doron recalls. These biological materials showed promise for improving semiconductors, leading to StoreDot’s founding in 2012 with initial investment from Samsung.
The company began exploring multiple applications: “We did like five programs. One was displays, one was memory, one was low K materials and one of them was fast charging of batteries.” But the viral response to their fast-charging demonstration revealed where the real opportunity lay.
Pivoting Against Expert Wisdom
The decision to focus solely on battery technology meant confronting significant skepticism from the scientific community. “Many, I want to say, 100 professors that came to visit us with the VCs that wanted to invest here, or university experts and so forth, that came, they all told me, ‘Duran, you’re wasting this 200 million, this can never happen,'” Doron shares.
The key breakthrough came from questioning fundamental assumptions about battery materials. “What they forgot is that everything starts with the materials,” Doron explains. “If you work on the material science of the solution, then you can basically break the boundaries of what is known to be possible.”
Building a Mission-Driven Team
Today, StoreDot has grown to 130 people across labs in Israel, California, China, and Sweden. The team is united by more than just technical challenges. “If you’ll go and ask one by one why they are at stored and not in some other company, is because they feel that they can make an impact on the planet, on global warming, on the environment,” Doron reveals.
This mission-driven culture has been crucial for their long-term innovation journey. “It’s not for everybody,” Doron acknowledges. “Over the years, I’ve seen people come and go… because they cannot cope with this long haul of taking such a groundbreaking technology to market.”
From Phones to Electric Vehicles
While StoreDot began with phone charging, their technology’s true potential emerged in addressing electric vehicle adoption barriers. “The number one barrier for adoption of electric vehicles today is what is called charging anxiety,” Doron explains. Their solution? Batteries that can provide “100 miles for each five minutes of charging,” with goals to reduce that to three minutes, and eventually two minutes.
The Road Ahead
StoreDot’s vision extends beyond just being a component supplier. As Doron describes their ultimate goal: “When they go and buy the vehicle or they are interested in a new electric vehicle, being a Tesla or any of the other brands, they come and ask ‘is StoreDot inside, can I charge in minutes?’ And if people will ask that we did our job.”
This future isn’t far off. While currently pre-revenue, StoreDot has secured partnerships with major automotive manufacturers and is targeting 2025-2026 for their first commercial vehicle platforms. Their journey from a materials science startup to a potential cornerstone of EV adoption demonstrates how breakthrough innovation often comes from questioning fundamental assumptions and persistently pursuing solutions that others deemed impossible.